Try to find opportunities throughout your child’s life to teach them sound money habits. They’ll thank you for it later.

Friday, 31 May 2019

My daughter Grace (13) recently read my book, Flourish Financially. She said the lesson that stood out most to her was a part that explained the cost of delaying your retirement savings. She found it fascinating and a little scary to think that her financial decisions today (at age 13) could actually have an impact on her 65-year-old self. I showed her a tool in the financial planning software that I use for my clients to demonstrate the cost of delaying saving for retirement. We put in her age and an annual savings amount of $1,000 and a desired retirement age of 65. The calculator showed that if she began today she would have $806,563 saved by the age of 65. If she waited until she was 23 to begin saving the same amount, she would only have $350,170. The fact that $1,000 a year and ten years could mean almost half a million dollars blew her mind! While Grace happens to have a financial planner as a mom, the reality is that there are daily opportunities for each of us to teach good financial decision making, and you don’t have to write a book to do it.

Dear Maddy, THE REAL WORLD - It’s Not That Bad…

Monday, 06 May 2019

I am so excited for my oldest daughter, Maddy, to graduate from the University of Wisconsin, Madison with a corporate finance major and wealth management minor this May. Although she initially thought the financial planning profession would be incredibly boring, Maddy took a psychology course that introduced her to the interesting meaning behind money, plus took an aptitude test that indicated financial planning would be a great fit for her interests and skills. I am excited that she has her first wealth management job and an apartment. I kept telling her about my excitement to see her “launch”. When Maddy asked if I could please stop talking about launching as she was really sad about leaving college. I held back from sending her the cost of her auto insurance rates as I was excitedly ready to take her off our policy and that this was all part of her launching process.

We are in the middle of a massive, $68 trillion-dollar wealth transfer. This epic shift of wealth from Baby Boomers to Millennials will be one of the largest financial transfers of all time.

Tuesday, 23 April 2019

Baby Boomers are the wealthiest generation in history and 45 million households will move trillions of dollars to the next generation. But with that transfer comes worry and fear of spoiling or creating an entitled generation. We’ve all heard sayings about how most wealth is lost in three generations. Interestingly enough, it’s actually often lost in two. In fact, 7 in 10 wealthy families have lost their fortunes by the second generation, and that number goes to 90% by the third. The theories for why this occurs focus on a lack of communication and a lack of financial preparedness for the heirs. In this article, we will go over four different steps to pass your wealth onto descendants without spoiling them or leaving them ill-prepared to manage their newfound wealth.